Learn from area CIOs and Chief Innovation Officers how they successfully launched an internal Innovation Center or Practice and created both a culture of innovation and a process to systematically create innovation designed to drive corporate growth.

Lessons Learned from Rethinking Customer Experience and Business Process
By focusing on Customer Experience first - you'll learn how area executives are rethinking business process and creating a more relevant and competitive organization.

CIOs, Chief Innovation Officers and Other senior technology executives must lead this technology revolution. This mission will require both hard and soft skills. It's often the soft skill that will make the difference between success or failure. You and your team members will gain valuable leadership lessons, including how to gain influence in the organization, lead your team and create change.

Faculty to date:

Michael J. Lehman, Chief Information Officer, Batteries Plus Bulbs

Michael has been with Batteries Plus Bulbs since 2000, starting as the IT Director, progressing to his current role as Chief Information Officer. As a Senior Operations and Technology Executive, Michael has helped lead innovative global Supply Chain, eCommerce, and Omni-Channel initiatives.

Kevin B. Boyd, CIO, The University of Chicago, Booth School of Business

Kevin has responsibility for the technology at Chicago Booth’s campuses in Chicago, London, Singapore and Hong Kong. Prior to coming to Booth, he was the Vice President of Product Management for Tribune Company. Boyd previously served first as a PMO Director and then as Director of Quality Assurance and Testing for CNA Financial in Chicago.

Justin Walsh, Chief Innovation Officer, New World Van Lines

As CINO for New World Van Lines, Justin has a wide range of responsibilities, which include shaping the company's technical vision, aligning business needs with the company's technology capabilities, application/web development, data analysis, ensuring the stability and security of company infrastructure and creating innovative, repeatable solutions to the challenges the company faces.

Jim Tanner, Chief Innnovation Officer, Morningstar

Jim Tanner joined Morningstar in 2012 as global head of Sales and Business Development, and now serves as their Chief Innovation Officer. Prior to joining Morningstar, Jim was an Executive Vice President of Markit responsible for data distribution services as well as Markit on Demand (previously Wall Street On Demand).

Ed Rybicki, Global Chief Information Officer, Merieux NutriSciences

Highly accomplished and forward-thinking Senior Technology Executive with 20+ years of achievement setting and executing information management strategies and operations for dynamic global corporations. Currently in the role of Global CIO for Merieux Nutrisciences, responsible for all IT activities across the 20 countries and 90 sites of business operations.

Sujal Patel, VP-Group Architect, DigitasLBi

Sujal Patel leads the Chicago and San Francisco Technology Engineering team, and is a co-lead of the North American Technology Architecture Council for DigitasLBi. Sujal also built out the Chicago Innovation Lab which is an environment where both clients and employees can co-create innovative ideas for real business problems.

Marian Cook, Chief Strategy Officer – Enterprise IT, moved to public service in 2015. She started as a Systems Engineer with IBM, reengineering processes, implementing systems and creating business and technology strategies. Moving to international consulting firms, she worked globally developing business growth and turnaround strategies.

Steve is a faculty member at Lake Forest Graduate School of Management. Steve is Principal at stevejhammond.com. He works at the intersection of learning, innovation, strategy and design. Steve focuses on leadership development for teams and individuals ranging from young athletes to seasoned executives. A master facilitator and coach, he combines 30+ years of corporate experience with research in applying deliberate creativity to organizational challenges.

Jim is a seasoned business executive with domain expertise in Financial Services, Marketing, Manufacturing and Service Industries. Jim works closely with many firms to help align business needs and technology for competitive advantage. His many roles include Sr. Vice President at PSC Group, LLC, Interim CIO at several organizations and strategic business consultant to many others.

Moderator: Scott Jansen, Vice President, CX Technology Evangelist, Avtex is a leader and creative professional focused on presenting and architecting technology solutions. In addition, Scott fulfills a role as a Microsoft vTSP, providing roadmap briefings on the future of cloud solutions.

Kelly Manthey, Chief Strategy Officer, Solstice

As part of Solstice's executive team, Kelly is responsible for Solstice's global corporate strategy, marketing, digital strategy consulting practice, and new service line development for Solstice's Internet of Things (IoT), Virtual Reality, and Robotics practices.

Moderator: Patrick Emmons, Founder of DragonSpears

Patrick's focus on taking the best of software development methodologies and applying them to building applications that support business goals, has created a solid foundation for the success of DragonSpears. Patrick is an accomplished technical architect who spent the past 15 years as co-founder and COO of Adage Technologies.

Bob is responsible for daily sales and operations including: Technology, Talent and Learning Solutions. Mr. Ruf has 18 years of experience in technical services and human resource consulting. Prior to the Judge Group, he was a senior account manager for a leading IT staffing firm in the Bay Area, where he successfully managed the staffing and professional development needs for various Fortune 500 companies. Mr. Ruf received his bachelor's degree in business marketing from Eastern Illinois University.

Technology is increasingly at the root of modern innovation. However, expectations for innovation to magically stem from new technologies is misguided and misunderstood. Innovation is often mistaken for invention and the important aspect of monetization is often overlooked in the scope of innovation. Technologists are often ill-equipped to tackle monetization strategies and are frequently improperly biased to assess the risk-reward balance that is required of entrepreneurial innovation. And while agile methodologies have brought product development discipline to technology teams, there are still gaps in understanding related to risk vs. opportunity, selling value vs. features as well as monetization models.

Jim Vaselopulos, Sr Vice President, PSC Group

Jim is a seasoned business executive with domain expertise in Financial Services, Marketing, Manufacturing and Service Industries. Jim works closely with many firms to help align business needs and technology for competitive advantage. His many roles include Sr. Vice President at PSC Group, LLC, Interim CIO at several organizations and strategic business consultant to many others.

Join a top panel of CIO's, Chief Innovation Officiers and related senior Technology executives as they share how they successfully implemented an Innovation Center or Practice, created a culture of innovation and the processes they implemented for sucess.

Justin Walsh, Chief Innovation Officer, New World Van Lines

As CINO for New World Van Lines, Justin has a wide range of responsibilities, which include shaping the company's technical vision, aligning business needs with the company's technology capabilities, application/web development, data analysis, ensuring the stability and security of company infrastructure and creating innovative, repeatable solutions to the challenges the company faces.

John leads the Office of Innovation and is responsible for Business Intelligence, Risk Analytics, IT, Quality Analytics, Digital & Marketing and growth strategies.

Previous to Thorek, John has held positions in healthcare consulting as the CTO and SVP for Allied Telesis where he led the global healthcare professional services division, and as a healthcare system administrator for Vanguard Health Systems, a 26 hospital system where he worked extensively on population health initiatives including the a Medicare Pioneer ACO and 4 Medicare Shared Savings ACOs. In 2012, his teams were awarded the designation of Most Wired Hospital by Hospital & Health Networks.

Marian Cook, Chief Strategy Officer – Enterprise IT, moved to public service in 2015. She started as a Systems Engineer with IBM, reengineering processes, implementing systems and creating business and technology strategies. Moving to international consulting firms, she worked globally developing business growth and turnaround strategies. In management, she turned around troubled business units and founded new consulting practice areas. She successfully founded her own management and technology consulting firm, then moved to the client side as a technology and strategic alliance executive. Overall, she has held multiple senior executive roles, including CEO and CIO, across industries and company size.

Scott Jansen is the Vice President, CX Technology Evangelist at Avtex. In addition, Scott fulfills a role as a Microsoft vTSP, providing roadmap briefings with Microsoft to customers on the future of cloud solutions. Scott is an experienced leader and creative professional focused on presenting and architecting technology solutions. With a diverse background in Strategic Relationships, Solutions Architecture, Engineering and Operational leadership, Scott is an innovative thought leader and passionate about Strategic CX Technology solutions

Session III.
Presentation: Digital Business Innovation: The Four Imperatives Disruptors and innovators are out to eat your lunch. There are four imperatives that they've already mastered that you must embrace to avoid losing market share: The Customer in Control, Accelerate Idea-to-Value, New Tech = New Business Models, and Culture as Enabler. Digital innovation never stops, nor can you. This talk will help you think big by applying the Four Imperatives to your enterprise. Get your business prepared to create sustainable growth in new areas with breakthrough products and services.

Kelly Manthey, Chief Strategy Officer, Solstice

Kelly Manthey is the Chief Strategy Officer at Solstice. As part of Solstice's executive team, Kelly is responsible for Solstice's global corporate strategy, marketing, digital strategy consulting practice, and new service line development for Solstice's Internet of Things (IoT), Virtual Reality, and Robotics practices. Kelly is actively involved in mentoring the next generation of technology leaders and founded the Women in Technology forum at Solstice as a source of mentorship and support.

Fab's primary responsibility is to help define and drive customer Business Critical solutions, leveraging Avaya’s Software Defined Architectures and developing SMART Enterprise Solutions. Prior to joining Avaya, he spent 18 years at Dell in various roles, but most recently as the Global Director for the Enterprise Storage Evangelists Team. As an active member of his team, they drove Dell’s overall storage strategy to market while interfacing and influencing Dell’s product teams. They advised customers of all sizes from Mid-Market to the top Global 500 on ways to better optimize their storage solutions. He has been in various IT companies and have held various senior roles the last 30 years. Having worked for companies like Bell Canada, Antares, Sidus, Dell and now Avaya, his dominate focus has been complete Enterprise Solutions and Data Center focused to solve real business problems

There are two schools of thought for Innovation. One is to create a lab and the other is to create a culture of innovation. Jim will explain how he is working with his team at Morningstar to create a culture of innovation. He will discuss the impediments and common fixes or approaches to converting your organization to a more creative and innovative enterprise. Jim will also discuss the pitfalls to solely using best practices and how to know when it is time to ignore a particular best practice in the interest of true innovation.

Jim Tanner, Chief Innnovation Officer, Morningstar

Jim Tanner joined Morningstar in 2012 as global head of Sales and Business Development, and now serves as their Chief Innovation Officer. Prior to joining Morningstar, Jim was an Executive Vice President of Markit responsible for data distribution services as well as Markit on Demand (previously Wall Street On Demand), a leading provider of services in the design, development and hosting of financial services websites, reports and tools. Jim joined Markit in 2010 when Wall Street on Demand was acquired by Markit. He has 20 years’ experience in the management and display of critical financial information, and has three patents.

Jim founded Wall Street On Demand in 1991 when working as an investment banker in New York and saw the potential of using new technology in order to make stock reports and charts available to individual investors for the first time. In 1998 the Company was acquired by Bridge Information Systems.

Session VI.
Learning to Lead: Enabling Teams to Create the Future

“We’re not very innovative.” “Our people are really good at doing what they’re told, but not very good at developing new things.” “Our leadership team gets it, but below that…not so much.”

We hear this a lot. What if we coached the skills of deliberate creativity like we coach processes like Lean and Agile? What if diverse teams had the tools to innovate more effectively? This session will explore those questions and propose ways your organization can grow its innovation power.

Steve is a faculty member at Lake Forest Graduate School of Management. Steve is Principal at stevejhammond.com. He works at the intersection of learning, innovation, strategy and design. Steve focuses on leadership development for teams and individuals ranging from young athletes to seasoned executives. A master facilitator and coach, he combines 30+ years of corporate experience with research in applying deliberate creativity to organizational challenges.

Steve’s experience includes roles at Walgreens (M&A), Hollister (finance), Novartis (strategy/intellectual property) and Honeywell (strategy/M&A). He holds an M.S. in Creativity Studies from Buffalo State College, an MBA from Cornell University and a B.A. in Chemistry from Colgate University. He is certified in the FourSight creativity instrument and is certified as a CAP II coach by USA Volleyball. Steve is also on the faculty of Illinois Institute of Technology and ExecOnline. He coaches at Adversity Volleyball Club.

Learn from area CIO's, Chief Innovation Officers and Senior Technology Executives the lessons learned and success stories from rethinking their customer experiences and business processes.

Kevin B. Boyd, CIO, The University of Chicago, Booth School of Business

Kevin has responsibility for the technology at Chicago Booth’s campuses in Chicago, London, Singapore and Hong Kong. Prior to coming to Booth, he was the Vice President of Product Management for Tribune Company. Boyd previously served first as a PMO Director and then as Director of Quality Assurance and Testing for CNA Financial in Chicago.

Michael J. Lehman, Chief Information Officer, Batteries Plus Bulbs

Michael has been with Batteries Plus Bulbs since 2000, starting as the IT Director, progressing to his current role as Chief Information Officer.

As a Senior Operations and Technology Executive, Michael has helped lead innovative global Supply Chain, eCommerce, and Omni-Channel initiatives. Michael’s education background includes Bachelor of Science degrees in both Business Administration and Computer Science from Carroll University (Waukesha, Wisconsin) plus a Master in Business Administration from Marquette University (Milwaukee, Wisconsin). Michael is an Information Technology leader with a passion for implementing business practical solutions. Michael’s focus includes strategic planning, business process improvement, and team development. With over 30 years of diverse industry experience, including Manufacturing, Health Care, Grocery Retail, and Specialty Retail, Michael understands the challenges businesses face and is able to deliver cost effective, robust solutions that drive business success.

Ed Rybicki, Global Chief Information Officer, Merieux NutriSciences

Highly accomplished and forward-thinking Senior Technology Executive with 20+ years of achievement setting and executing information management strategies and operations for dynamic global corporations. Currently in the role of Global CIO for Merieux Nutrisciences, responsible for all IT activities across the 20 countries and 90 sites of business operations. Broad-based expertise throughout many IT functions especially in the planning and execution of strategic turnarounds, culture change initiatives, technical project portfolios, and diverse service delivery efforts.

Sujal Patel, VP-Group Architect, DigitasLBi

Sujal Patel leads the Chicago and San Francisco Technology Engineering team, and is a co-lead of the North American Technology Architecture Council for DigitasLBi. Sujal also built out the Chicago Innovation Lab which is an environment where both clients and employees can co-create innovative ideas for real business problems through hands-on work with emerging technology. Prior to joining DigitasLBi, Sujal spent 16 years at Accenture as one of their leaders in their digital architecture global practice within their Consulting organization.

Moderator: Patrick Emmons, Founder of DragonSpears

Patrick's focus on taking the best of software development methodologies and applying them to building applications that support business goals, has created a solid foundation for the success of DragonSpears. Patrick is an accomplished technical architect who spent the past 15 years as co-founder and COO of Adage Technologies. He is a Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer (MCSD) and his past has also included work as a developer / consultant for Ameritech, Motorola, and Baker Robbins.